


Unjust but Justified

by crowsmile



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Short One Shot, Wilson deals with killing people, its hard, shadow wilson's in here, uhhh it's mostly talking?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 03:05:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14583576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowsmile/pseuds/crowsmile
Summary: Taking the throne put Wilson into Their hands, where he ultimately faces torture that results in him taking actions he regrets. Suffocated by guilt and trapped alone, he confides in his shadow self.





	Unjust but Justified

The blood first crawled, vicarious, grotesquely warm, mere seconds after the deed. In hot tendrils it spun its labyrinthine route over Wilson’s shadow form, the sensation of it so horrific that it seeped through to Wilson’s throned self. A wheezing, anguished breath rose from his throat, broke with a sob, and trailed off in a whine. The gore wove up his neck and strangled him with guilt.  
His first kill as king, his first blood, and though his shadow form washed its hands of it, he could still smell and feel the cloying touch of another’s life spilled all over him. Another sob broke, breathing tight and hitching, and he slumped over in his Throne and cried.

He wasn’t sure how long he relinquished his mind unto sobbing, but it could have been years. Wilson could hardly move but somehow succeeded in injuring himself, breaking his nails on the armrests of the throne until they bled, attempting to twist his head and neck to bite himself, or the throne, or anything to staunch his own feeble breaths. He paused only to exhale in surprise when he felt the cold, familiar pressure of a clawed hand on his shoulder, and, startled, glanced back to see his shadow form, calm and collected, looking down at him with a keenly intelligent gaze.

Wilson was unsure what kind of game this double of his was playing. It was, ultimately, a shadow, one of Them– but it was also him, part of his mind, their consciousnesses one and the same. Some part of his brain was demanding he be kind to himself, that what he did– that who he killed– didn’t matter, or was justified, or something else. He could feel that singular demand that he did the right thing in that touch on his shoulder, that dead-cold caress. Even without his shadow’s lilting voice breaking the tear-punctuated silence, he could feel his brain fighting against itself, an internal desire to prove himself right fighting the moral crisis tooth and claw. Shivering, Wilson relented his body into his double’s touch, feeling it hold him and ground him, the humanoid touch somehow severing the burning tendrils of recent homicide that distressed him so. It was strange– the same claws that had wrenched the life of a survivor out through their neck now reassured him, soft against the fabric of his threadbare waistcoat, a manifestation of the part of his brain that was so deeply narcissistic it justified actions as horrid as what he did.  
Eyes shimmering with tears, he exhaled waveringly, turning to face his double. Once again, he was struck dumb by their differences, how tall and lean his shadow form was, how it was uncannily constructed to be so perfect as to render it inhuman. Its face was more like porcelain or the chitin of a smooth-shelled insect than skin, and it startled Wilson every time its expression changed, expecting it to be a static plaster-cast. Wilson shifted in his seat, his crying stifled to a pressurized whine akin to a teakettle, before faltering and finally making room for words.

Voice cracking like burning paper, Wilson finally wheezed out his thoughts, facing down the reflection that insultingly sought to make him feel alright.  
“I–I’m just like him...” he hissed, body shaking at the thought, his mind bucking against his skull in anger and regret. “Like him–” Another shiver wracked his body, almost a convulsion, his tears hot and running fast down his face. He expected the shadows to laugh and jeer at how quickly he was broken. Shoulders rising to a hunch, he practically collapsed, only held up by the gentle touch of his shadow’s claws running under his jaw, tilting his head so he was forced to look back at its eerily beautiful face.  
“Just like whom, darling?” it purred, grin spreading, revealing radium-plated teeth.  
Wilson balked at the memory of inhabiting its body, having those teeth in his mouth, using them to exact revenge, on the very man he was worrying he was becoming.  
“M-Maxwell...”

The mere pronunciation of the ex-king’s name left a sour taste in Wilson’s mouth, such a fury against the torture Wilson bore under the rule of a tyrant. His blood boiled, briefly but long enough to somewhat realize that he still had that untamed shred of murderous hatred within him. Wilson’s sobs grew louder, more anguished, his body curling in as much as it could against the throne’s restraints at the awful realization.  
“You see? You s-see? I’m just like him... you can read my thoughts, you felt that f-feeling too–”  
“Hush, dear,” it crooned, voice dripping and saccharine as usual, but somehow genuinely caring. There was a benefit to having his brain within that creature– it had to care about him, his mind, as some facet of his consciousness selfishly begged to be alright. It paused, not breathing, unblinking eyes watching him keenly. 

“Let me tell you something, darling. We cannot be like Maxwell, as he killed out of cold blood. We did not know him– we had not met him, let alone wronged him in any way. We couldn't have,” it began, voice soft. Wilson trembled in its grasp, somewhat frightened by silence, mostly by his own mind than by the proximity of his double’s pointed talons to the meat of his neck. “He acted out of the pure vileness of his heart. Each time he hurt us, he tried to instill that same evil unto us. Every time we died from his hounds or his summers, blackness would attempt to fill our heart. For what he has done, Maxwell deserves a punishment a thousand times worse than any pain he inflicted upon us, a thousand times more than each death we faced from his machinations.” As the shadow talked, its expression hardly changed, frigidly regarding Wilson’s expression. Then, suddenly, its countenance shifted, to a kind and somewhat triumphant smile, eyes glittering with an air of superiority. “–and yet, my dear, we have done hardly that. He flayed our very brain with no motivation at all– and we, with so many reasons to do so to him, have merely only killed him once. Are we not the greater man?”  
Its expression shifted invisibly, a satisfied grin, sensing an internal agreement echoing within Wilson’s skull. Pausing, it licked its lips, then its eye, proving again that it was far from a mere person. Fingers gripping against the throne, Wilson shuddered, still unnerved by how inhuman his double looked, how predatory, and yet how kind and convincing its words were. Sensing his own tenseness, Wilson breathed in, and exhaled a long breath, attempting to expel the anxiety from his body and talk to his own mind as an equal.  
“I’ll– I still–” he stumbled over his words, façade of calmness quickly betrayed.  
“I know. It’s tough, yes, but are we not the kinder king?”  
“W-we... I am– you’re not. Y-you killed him!” Wilson stammered, the last few syllables lilting up towards a yell. Suddenly, he was furious, not at himself but at his reflection, at that perfect form and the sharp teeth and the talons that were used to vivisect a human being–

His anger sputtered, snuffed out by the complete lack of reaction from his shadow self. Its alabaster face was unmoving, eyes not so much as twitching. It didn’t even flinch. His face still raw from tears but now twisted into an expression of exasperation, Wilson leaned back in the throne, wishing to take back his outburst.  
“We are one and the same. I am merely another body of our combined two. What I do is an expression of our subconscious desires, the id, to use the psychoanalytical term. It merely took a little nudging for you to realize what you wanted.”  
Wilson hissed, tensing. “I was tortured, you bastard, by the shadows– shadows like you. You just stood there! How could you–”  
“We may be a king, but we are subordinate to Them. We do what we must. That much is proven, especially by our actions of late.”  
Its sentence was so matter-of-fact, so unwaveringly spoken, that Wilson sighed and leaned his head against the back of the throne, feeling the painful prickle of its shadowy texture against his scalp.  
“Why are you... right... about everything,” he wheezed, sniffing, wanting to wipe his face but unable to. “I didn’t want to kill him... but it felt good. It did, it really did, I’m so sorry–”  
“No need to apologize, darling.”  
“I-I’m apologizing to... myself,” Wilson muttered, tapping his finger against the armrest of the throne. “Because– not because I’m like him, but because that doesn’t seem like a morally right thing to enjoy, does it?”

His shadow’s radiantly toxic smile split its face, eyes flaring and boring into Wilson’s own.  
“Not just, but justified,” it purred, grin parting briefly to exhale the words, before it turned on its heel and took three steps away into nothingness.


End file.
